Cool Campaigns and Comments

During class, I followed a cyber link in Ryan M. Milner's article, Dialogue is Important, Even When It's Impolite. It led me to another page about the #YesAllWomen campaign that is going on right now for Twitter. The hash tag has been used by both women and men to wage the war against misogyny and sexism. It also serves to counter #NotAllMen, a hash tag often used in sidetracking or weakening feminist arguments. I took the time to read some of the tweets from #YesAllWomen. The ones I read were very powerful in their message and definitely pulled at my heartstrings. The campaign is a good example of how anonymity can be used for good. With the hash tag, trollers have, of course, used anonymity to harass and defame others, but good people have also felt empowered enough by their anonymity to post and say brave things they wouldn't normally say. I would definitely recommend that you look into the campaign a bit more to get a feel for diversity of opinions expressed with the hashtag. Overall, the hash tag campaign combined with the anonymity of the Internet  "fostered robust conversations" that might not have happened otherwise. From this realization, I have definitely gained a more nuanced (to take a word from our New York Time's articles) view on online anonymity.
I also want to talk about the New York Times website itself. I found it to be truly inspiring! Because the Times moderates all of its comments, I didn't have to sludge through dozens of obscene, useless, off topic, or offensive comments before stumbling across something worth reading. Instead, I felt that each commenter brought something valuable to the online debate about trolling and added to my understanding of online anonymity. I thought the comments were just as good and as important as the articles themselves. The New York Times has been able to pretty much get rid of trolling while still allowing people to post anonymously. Their comments section reflects an ideal: people can express dissident opinions, as protected by the freedom of speech, and people can also protect their identities when they post.
Unfortunately, the New York Times' comments section is not a viable option for many websites. It is expensive to pay moderators to sift through thousands of comments every day, and other similar comment moderating systems have drawbacks of their own. Fighting trolling thus becomes a difficult task for any website with a smaller budget than NYT. The examples of #YesAllWomen and the New York Time's moderated comments section, however, give us hope of a brighter future for the Internet: a future where free speech is protected, anonymity is allowed, and the trolls are silenced.